Morocco's Amekraz accused of putting country’s interests second

LONDON - Morocco’s minister of employment, Mohamed Amekraz, expressed his surprise at country’s decision to normalise ties with Israel in an interview aired Saturday on Al Mayadeen news channel, saying that all Moroccans “see the Palestinian question as a question of injustice.”

Amekraz, who is the youth secretary general of the co-ruling Islamist Party of Justice and Development (PJD), chose to give his opinion to a channel that is close to Lebanon’s Shiite movement of Hezbollah which Morocco accused in May 2018 of providing weapons and training to the Algeria-backed Polisario Front.

“Moroccans were surprised by the decision to normalise ties with Israel,” Amekraz told Al Mayadeen.

“My organisation's position on this normalisation and on the rest of the issues related to the Palestinian cause is clear and unambiguous. We thus express the historical position of the youth of the PJD which is the position of all Moroccans,” he said.

“All Moroccans see the Palestinian question as a question of injustice and the usurpation of land and the rights of legitimate owners,” he added.

The minister of employment’s comment drew criticism from local media, accusing the PJD of putting Morocco’s interests second.

“Total refusal of a decision by the head of state by a minister of His Majesty's Government at a time when King Mohammed VI is making sustained efforts to snatch recognition from the world of Morocco's sovereignty over the southern regions,” wrote L’Observateur.info.

“What are the PJD and its youth playing at? Are they for the homeland or against it? We have to resolve this issue, we cannot continue with a party that relegates the country's interest to the background,” it added.

L’obesrvateur stressed that the PJD does not have the right to speak on behalf of all Moroccans because it does not represent them all as it only got a million votes in the last election.

Le Collimateur.ma lashed out at Amekraz for ignoring the lost lives of Moroccan soldiers during the long conflict with the Polisario separatists.

“The minister seems to have taken no notice of this sovereign decision, nor of the blood of Moroccan soldiers who were martyred during 16 years of hostilities carried out by the armed militias of the Polisario supported by the Algerian army,” wrote le Collimateur.

“Apparently Amekraz found the parade by donning the SG cap of the PJD youth to serve soup to Al Mayadeen channel and its Iranian-Syrian sponsors, to the detriment of his country which was unacceptably attacked for its normalisation with “l 'Zionist entity', despite the pledges given by His Majesty the King, president of the Al-Quds Committee, to continue to place the Palestinian question "at the same level" as the question of the Moroccan Sahara,” it added.

Amekraz’s comments on Al Mayadeen News came almost four months after Prime Minister Saad Dine El Otmani told the opening session of the 16th forum of the PJD youth that he rejected any normalisation of ties with Israel.

“We refuse any normalisation with the Zionist entity because this emboldens it to go further in breaching the rights of the Palestinian people,” El Otmani said.

“The King, the government and Moroccan people reject any attempt to judaize al-Aqsa’s saint places,” he added.

Two days later, Otmani said he made his statement as head of the PJD and not as head of government.

US President Donald Trump said Thursday that Israel and Morocco have agreed to normalise relations.

As part of the deal announced near the end of Trump's term, the United States will recognize Morocco's claim over the Western Sahara region.

Trump said Israel and Morocco would restore diplomatic and other relations, including the immediate reopening of liaison offices in Tel Aviv and Rabat and the eventual opening of embassies.

King Mohammed VI told Trump in a telephone conversation that stressing that Morocco “supports a solution of two states living side-by-side in peace and security and that negotiations between the Palestinian and Israeli sides remain the only way to achieve a final, lasting and comprehensive settlement of this conflict.”